The present invention relates to an instruction and learning machine employing a computer (referred to as a "computer-aided instruction (CAI) machine", hereinbelow).
In response to recent rapid progress of computers and their related technologies, CAI machines employing personal computers, etc. are being put to practical use in education and training scenes of schools and corporations and thus, a number of learning materials are commercially available or prepared for themselves. On the other hand, in the course of progress of the known CAI machines to practical use, it has been widely recognized that the known CAI machines have such a drawback that CAI systems have the learning initiative. Thus, in order to materialize learning in which learners have the learning initiative, CAI systems based on hypermedia are attracting public attention.
One example of learning materials used in conventional CAI machines based on hypermedia is described with reference to FIG. 1. In FIG. 1, the known learning material includes a plurality of information units called "nodes" 301. The nodes 301 include various data such as sentences, graphic forms, still images, etc. The nodes 301 are connected with each other by links 302 such that a learning material for CAI is formed as a whole. This is described in, for example, a magazine entitled "Bit", Vol. 22, No. 8 (August, 1990), pages 35-42 and published by Kyoritsu Shuppan Co., Ltd. of Japan.
The known CAI machine of the above described arrangement is operated as follows. By tracing the links 302 with a mouse or the like, a learner sequentially attains access to the various data contained in the nodes 301 prepared as the learning material so as to perform learning.
However, in the above described arrangement of the known CAI machine, since the learning initiative is completely given to the leaner, learners who have no sufficient knowledge enabling learning through search cannot perform learning efficiently. Nevertheless, if a CAI system is arranged to simply guide the learner, such a problem arises that learning in which the learner has the learning initiative cannot be materialized.